Perhaps off-topic but my inner hacker finds it very upsetting that getting blood tests can be so cumbersome, despite being so important. Make an appointment, transit to the doctor's office, pay a bunch of money, wait for labs, wait for your doctor to explain and prescribe stuff to you. It's cumbersome enough to the point where the vast majority of humans aren't testing anywhere near the frequency they should, including myself.
I don't think running diagnostics on a human should be this hard, we run diagnostics on our apps, computers, cars more often than ourselves. I wonder if people are working on making this process a lot easier (or if it's even possible, I have zero knowledge of the space).
I paid $47 for this vitamin D test (via blood draw): https://www.lifeextension.com/lab-testing/itemlc081950/vitam...
You get a doctor's prescription (from a Florida doctor, good for anywhere in the country) and instructions to go to your nearest Labcorp for a blood draw. So make sure you have a Labcorp near you.
Why should you even need doctor prescription for something like this? Week ago I just went to nearby lab and asked them to make a blood draw to verify my vitamin D levels and got results same day via email.
US doctors have a strong political presence through the AMA and maintain a monopoly on nearly every medical procedure, test, and many drugs. It's impossible to get anything without a doctor's prescription and it's usually impossible to get that prescription without a (paid) visit to their office.
These are definitely a step up than what I'm used to and I appreciate the effort put into the reply. I'm still naively hoping there will be a scifi-esque biometric scanner or finger-prick analyzer, as another commenter put it, some day ;)
It would be great to have very easy testing with a pin prick of blood. This dream is what kept Theranos going for so long, but hopefully that scandal does not scare off other people from trying.
Quest diagnostics will let you do it yourself. I am in the process of ordering a self-serve vit-d test and metabolic panel for about $150, no doctor referral required.
(I also dislike the limitations as I feel like people are more capable of helping themselves in a lot of these situations)
You can walk in and get a basic metabolic panel in about 15 minutes, with results the next day or two, for about $50, without a doctor. I use them for frequent STI testing.
Elizabeth Holmes founded a startup a while back to solve this problem...
It seems like it’s just tough because you generally need a fair amount of blood for each test. We could lose some of the bureaucracy but it seems hard to get away from human phlebotomists and lab techs.
I use medichecks. I order the tests I want, a nurse comes and takes my blood at home, then a few days later I get results emailed to me and a brief rundown from a doctor that’s looked them over. If there’s any problems I can take it up with my GP, even that can be done online now.
Yeah, Discord still impresses me with how clean the interface _feels_ to put it simply. I remember only being on the Discord web client for a long time and remarking how much I enjoyed the interactions despite not being a native app. Then I loaded up the console and was pleasantly surprised to see it was all built in React. I suddenly felt very insecure about my own skill with React :p
I was just talking about this with a friend earlier today. It's interesting to have witnessed Blizzard go from indie maker to #1 PC game studio to whatever you would describe them now. But the reasons for their downfall shouldn't be surprising, since you see similar in tech often:
Step 1: Lose core talent that made your company what it was (Blizzard North, Chris Metzen)
Step 2: Misalign incentives between shareholders and users (Arguably: Destroying the SCBW pro scene, Diablo mobile, RMAH, WarCraft Reforged's journey so far, etc.)
Step 3: Add time
For the younger generations, Riot Games is now to them what Blizzard Entertainment was to me when I was growing up. Hopefully Riot doesn't fall victim to the same issues, or perhaps these issues are inevitable for any company after a certain growth stage.
Hah, HN's load speed actually makes it my go-to bookmark to test if everything is working okay. Internet connectivity lagging? Check HN. My own web app loading slowly? Check HN.
Very helpful post, actually included a lot of interesting tidbits that I hadn't read before with other b2b sales material.
One question that occasionally pops into my mind is, what is the legality behind charging BigCo A $x and BigCo B $x + y?
Surely one wouldn't be able to do this with products (I'll sell this burger to you for $5 but this other person must pay $10 for it), so how is it justified in b2b especially if the feature sets are the same?
Stripe Atlas has personally saved me as a bootstrapped startup founder more than 100 hours over the past 3-4 years we've worked with them. It's just so relieving knowing I'm covered on anything regarding incorporation, legal, taxes/accounting, and I won't have to spend a ton of my own time researching vendors and googling esoteric topics.
"Working out of one of their offices side by side is a great way to hear how they talk, what they care about, etc."
I've heard this suggested occasionally, how does this ask usually work? Besides the fact that our clients aren't near where we're based, it feels socially strange asking to impose on someone's office for a day - I must be missing something.
Companies who are potential early customers are also usually growth stage startups themselves (100-500 people) and want to help out other entrepreneurs. Email the founders to tell them what you're up to, and tell them you won't be a drag on productivity. A company like this almost certainly also has extra office space as they rent for growth.
Honestly I felt the same way, but the trick is to pick a start up where you know how and are able to do this. Or find a partner who can. The most likely way to do this is to go to conferences, happy hours, and introductions from friends.
If you are writing software for accountants and don't know how to spend time with accountants you're screwed, if you are writing software for in house counsel at utility companies and you don't know how to hang out with them you're screwed, and this goes for pretty much any B2B startup.
I did this with our early customer by offering to help in a few different ways. Especially if they are geographically a bit more distanced then you can tell them you would be happy to be there for 1 or 2 days to do multiple things, like run a few workshops, have a coffee with their manager and meet with IT (all three just examples). It isn't a very strange question to ask to use a spare desk in between those things.
the obvious way is to adjust the product to their needs. like if you were consulting. so you go there, watch the user use your product, write code. rinse, repeat. of course you can do that only for the first ten customers
I had the same interaction but one day their algorithm flubbed and sent me a question that had very obvious Avengers: Endgame spoilers in the title. I had to unsubscribe after that.
Hate to admit it, but I'm a massive proponent of remote work (and other work/life balance-friendly initiatives), but my productivity on average is a lot lower than if I'm in an office.
I still wfh every day, but days where I work out of a coffee shop or anywhere public, I'm a LOT more productive. I think it's just the idea that at any time someone can see my screen, making me less likely to pull up Netflix or a game or something equally distracting.
I'm a simpleton when it comes to AI/ML, but this was pretty impressive to me! It's really interesting how well this seems to have paired up because the portraits, while generic-ish, do seem like they're legitimate human creations. There's probably an overworked animation studio out there that would be interested in this.
I don't think running diagnostics on a human should be this hard, we run diagnostics on our apps, computers, cars more often than ourselves. I wonder if people are working on making this process a lot easier (or if it's even possible, I have zero knowledge of the space).